Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work

By David Rock

Book Overview

You start a conversation with someone you manage, a conversation about a project that could be going better. You want to improve their performance and think you know what they should do. You estimate the conversation should only take a few minutes, yet somehow 45 minutes later you're still going around in circles. Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, improving human performance involves one of the hardest challenges in the known universe: changing the way people think. In constant demand as a coach, speaker, and consultant to companies around the world, David Rock has proven the secret to leading people (and living and working with them) is found in the space between our ears. If people are being paid to think, he writes, isn't it time the business world found out what the thing doing the work, the brain, is all about?

Supported by the latest groundbreaking research, Quiet Leadership provides, for the first time, a brain-based approach that will help busy leaders, executives, and managers improve their own and their colleagues' performance.

Quiet Leadership is for the CEO who wants to be more effective at inspiring his or her leadership team, but has just a few minutes each week to speak to them. It's for the executive who'd like to get a manager to plan more effectively, but can't seem to work out how. It's for the manager who wants to inspire the sales team, but isn't sure how to do it. It's for the human resources professional who is ready to take on changing the culture of a whole organization. It's for the parent or caregiver who wants to reach new levels of communication and understanding with their family members.

Quiet leaders are masters at bringing out the best performance in others. They improve the thinking of people around them--literally improving the way their brains process information--without telling anyone what to do. Given how many people in today's companies are being paid to think and analyze, improving our thinking is one of the fastest ways to improve performance.

Quiet Leadership offers a practical, six-step guide to making permanent workplace performance change by unleashing higher productivity, new levels of morale, and greater job satisfaction. Above all, Quiet Leadership will give you the clarity and strength that comes from mastering and using powerful insights that teach you to perform and succeed, at the highest level.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060835907
• ISBN13: 9780060835903
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Harper Business
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Purchase of Quiet Leadership

The book was exactly as described before purchase. The delivery time was excellent. I would recommend using this vendor again.

Must Read .. Excellent Book

This is a wonderful book and full on insights. After every few lines you need to ponder on the points mentioned. The outlook is so different and valid than the every day outlook on matters that matter the most. It is a must read for all.

Thought Leadership

As a professional project manager, the ideas in this book strike a real chord. So many books on leadership spend their time cataloging the attributes and behaviours of good leaders, but offer no advice as to how to implement for ourselves a leadership style that is authentic and appropriate. To anyone who has to manage people in a day to day, pressured environment the advice in this book is very welcome. In particular the emphasis on allowing people to work things out for themselves makes a lot of sense, as well as the focus on insight as the energising mechanism. The information on neuro-science is a bit of a distraction: it may or may not be true, and so runs the risk of detracting from some simple and profound messages. Even just to consider that everyone is thinking differently and therefore having a different experience is, on reflection, self evident, and doesn't need experimental validation. As Einstein explained, the real breakthrough comes from the insight, the experimental validation may never come. There is plenty in this book to help those who would like a bit of help, and, apparently, really annoy those who don't.

People are their brains... sort of

Finally, a book that acknowledged the human brain as it relates to leadership. When you want to lead someone, you are attempting to get them to think in a way that will cause/allow them to act as you want them to. This book reveals the most recent discoveries in neuroscience and applies them to the domain of leadership. What a find! The book presents six steps to leading people and they are: 1) Think about Thinking 2) Listen for Potential 3) Speak with Intent 4) Dance Toward Insight 5) Create New Thinking 6) Follow Up In the end, the most important thing I can say about this book is that it's different. If you're tired of buying and reading leadership books that are more of just the same, you really should consider this book. There is very little here you've ever seen before.

Good R.O.I. on your reading investment

If you are involved in managing the intellectual capital of others or your own, this book will prove a valuable tool. Rather than add to the numerous dissertational cures for insomnia coming from the field of management and leadership training, the author distills down emergant new technologies of leadership into a workable strategy. This should be a mandatory entry on the syllabus for those about to enter leadership positions, or a great polish to improve on one's own executive style. Hierarchical and authoritative leadership strategies have been breaking down in the new economy. If you are looking for a catalyst to guide your organization and it's thinker/producers into the top of the league tables in your industry, start here. Focusing on the vanguard elements of leadership, the author has made this a pleasant read. His style is friendly, yet thorough with great attention to detail. The best teachers come from the schools of experience and research. The material in this book seems to come from the 'front lines'. The short hours of investment in reading the book and contemplation have a very high return. Anyone looking for an edge as they develop their career and those of others should investigate this book.